Camelittle

Went to see Camelot at the Muny night before last as kind of a late birthday present for Abby myself. There was a nice meal involved and it was good to get out, but I figured out something about the musical Camelot that I hadn't realized before.

It's not a very good musical.

It's very self-important and a little dull. The music is underwhelming. The characters and costumes were way over-the-top. It's hard to take people's solemn proclamations of love seriously when they're wearing tights and calling each other "Lance" or "Ginny" and making puns about sending people to "knight school".

There's no clear antagonist until two thirds of the way through the show--and that conflict is never resolved. In fact, nothing is ever resolved; the characters all end up alone and miserable and their grand plan to create a perfect order fails pretty miserably. The ending is, thus, a little bit of a let-down, and perhaps this all might have worked if the music wasn't so upbeat.

The bulk of the conflict is emotional, which means all the characters walk around carrying swords, but they almost never use them. There's a joust, but it happens off stage. There's a fight midway through Act II, but it's very brief and, in last night's production, was performed in slow motion.

This was the last of Lerner and Loewe's musicals (until their reunion some 14 years later for a film called The Little Prince). Their best known work is undoubtedly the flawed but oft-performed My Fair Lady, and they also penned a favorite of mine: Paint Your Wagon. Camelot is ambitious, but it seems to disintegrate under its own weight while simultaneous evaporating with unnecessary lightness. All told, that makes for a rather confused story without and ending or any sense of purpose.

Still, it was good to get out.

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